16 books this month and 5464 pages. It was a super mixed bag this month with some really high ratings and enjoyable books to ending the month on two 1star books. Combine that with the last week of the month being a tough work week and I have to consciously remember all the good books. So time to ramble!
The Good:
Salute the Dark 5 Stars
God Emperor of Dune 4.5 Stars
The Book of Atrix Wolfe 4.5 Stars
Funny thing is, all these books were re-reads. I OBVIOUSLY have great taste in books. Except I have some books going on The Bad list. Bleh.
The Bad:
The Last Good Man 1 Star
Bloodwalk 1 Star
Redmagic was a VERY generous 2 star on my part.
The Last Good Man, well, I liked everything about it. Except for the main character’s motivations and reactions stemming from those motivations. Your mileage may, and probably will, drastically vary from mine. Bloodwalk was just a mess of debut book that had no editorial oversight. Not unexpected in the Forgotten Realms series.
I am nearing the end of the Eyeshield 21 manga and actually plan to read the last 4 or 5 volumes this holiday weekend and review them all. So expect daily double manga posts. You have been warned. After this, I’ll be diving into the Oh My Goddess manga, which I own. It is finished, has 48 volumes and I’ve read up to #21 or #22 years ago. Starting from scratch and reviewing each volume, as before I’m pretty sure I wasn’t putting any reviews for my manga.
After taking a break from the various Malazan books, I’m jumping right back in this month. My first book of September will be House of Chains, weighing in at around 1000 pages. I expect my book numbers to drop with that behemoth clogging up the highway but my page numbers to stay on track.
On the personal side, I wrote some very interesting, to me, posts this last month. A History of…Journaling was fun to write. Closing in on the My Favorite Things posts with only 1 left to write. I’ve really enjoyed listing my favorite books each month and am definitely going to miss that. However, I also wrote my initial Surviving a Bad Book and I’m hoping I can turn that into a regular set of posts for a couple of months.
Rounding these doggies up with some cover love now. Here is an alternate cover to God Emperor of Dune that I found when I was looking for covers for my ebook.
Now that is some old school cover art right there!
Bookstooge's Reviews on the Road 
That is some serious reading! I am so behind. I have a lot of catching up to do now that I am back. Hope you have been well.
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I have been well, thank you. It is good to see you back again and posting 🙂
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Thank you, it is great to be back, but slow going.
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hahaha that cover is very old school!!
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I recognize how the trees are drawn, on the right. I’ve seen this artist before, I just don’t know their name 🙂
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I somehow missed the surviving a bad book post…I love that idea! Not a bad month all in all – you get a three day after the crummy overtime week?
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Thankfully, I do get 3 days off.
Of course, I forgot to turn my alarm off last night, so I wake up this morning at 6am to the alarm blaring. I’m really hoping the rest of the weekend is better 😀
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Lots of books again, despite extra work, really cool!
Oh man, House of Chains.. Is that were we get introduced to KARSA? I will probably take a long break from the series, I don’t have any motivation at all to finish MoI and haven’t touched it at all for weeks. Still feeling a bit bad I never finished the Read-Along 😦 Maybe it just wasn’t the right time for it^^ I am so annoyed because I remember it being my favourite and now I don’t even want to finish!
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I found that the extra work actually drove me to read more, as I simply let almost everything else go. Not something I care to repeat 🙂
Yep, HoC is where we meet Karsa. The first 20% of the book is just his storyline then after that it starts back to fragmenting between so many pov’s.
MoI hit me hard too. I had to take a break and we’ll see how long I have to take after HoC.
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More journaling please.
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Not sure what you mean by that. Will you elaborate?
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“Some of my favourite Things”, “Most Read Authors Post”, etc. Meaning, not strictly book reviews. I also write a few of these on occasion.
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Gotcha. I have to admit, they always draw a bigger audience than just the book reviews. My fear has always been that I’ll turn into one of those people who say they have a book blog but when you go to their page, there isn’t a review in sight because they’re so busy doing book tags, and days of the week theme posts, etc.
My other issue is the creativity issue. I am not a very creative guy and I have to really work to whip out those non-review posts.
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“My fear has always been that I’ll turn into one of those people who say they have a book blog but when you go to their page, there isn’t a review in sight because they’re so busy doing book tags, and days of the week theme posts, etc.”
Now, you just made me laugh! I’m glad you’re no longer on BL’s…You couldn’t imagine what’s going there right now… book tags and theme posts left and right!
It’s not my thing!
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I keep visiting there, because I have to update my calibre library from the info on booklikes. With the problems that are there, the people who remain need something to bring them altogether, give them a reason to keep on sticking around. And social, non-review posts will do just that. It’s when they become the main reason that I have issues.
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Something about old school covers like those promises fantastic world-building for me hahah Definitely a great month of reading (even with the bad, bad books). Hope September has great books queued up for you, sir. Happy reading.
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Thank you!
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